Remember The Families Who Bring Us Freedom

Shopping Resources — By Shopping Blogs on November 15, 2009 9:38 am

The giant shopping plaza had just been complete. Heather could not wait to walk through the revolving doors and explore every inch of the super-mall. She lives in the suburbs of a large metro area and knows every mall within 40 miles like the back of her hand. The excitement and adventure of weaving through a new mall had Heather holding her credit card in hand as she drove to the mall.

It was a Friday morning when she pulled onto the freshly poured parking lot. Even the stripes on the ground were brightly painted and marked the way for her to go. As she looked up and saw the grand opening banners draped across the doorways, she knew it was going to be a wonderful day.

Heather started out by taking out the list she had made in her purse. There were four children on her list and she had to buy Christmas presents for them. She had chosen their names from a local group in town who provides gifts for children whose parent is oversees on duty with the military. The children on her list ranged in age from 2 to 8 and, having no children of her own, she was unsure what they might like.

Luckily, each child had been asked to write down three things they might like to get for Christmas and the organization had also listed their clothing and shoe sizes.

Heather walked into the corridor and gasped as she drew in her breath. The mall had taken out all the stops on decorating for the holiday season. Each twinkle light made a rainbow reflection on the shiny tile floors. The garland was hung perfectly draped at every banister, window, doorway and passage. There were ornaments and doves, holly and mistletoe. Down the center of every flower box were evergreens adorned with rows of sparkling ice cycles.

Heather found herself taken away in the vastness of the mall and before she knew it, she had lost track of where she had been or where she needed to go. She had to laugh at herself, a professional shopper of sorts getting lost in a mall.

Luckily, there was a shopping directory at the next corner where she would either enter down the main hallway or trail off another extension of the mall. She took a moment to find the spot on the shopping directory where she was standing and then looked at the list of stores.

The shopping directory had broken up the index of shops by type. All the women clothing stores were listed and then labeled with numbers and letters on the shopping directory map.

Heather was tempted to take a quick look at her favorite store, but reminded herself of the purpose of her trip. She quickly looked down the shopping directory index and found the listing for the toy store.

She was surprised to see that there were three stores dedicated to selling childrens toys. One of them listed on the shopping directory stood out to her as one of her favorite places to go with her brother when they were little. As she entered the store, the train sets and toy dogs were all racing around the store. The chaos of a hundred toys all going at once was a delight to her. She took her time going up and down every aisle, putting a lot of thought into each choice for the four children on her list.

Finally, she walked to the register with four gifts that were just perfect for each of the children that would be missing their mother or father this holiday. Although the gifts could not replace a missing family member, the joy these children would get and the thankfulness in the hearts of their parents would help Heather spread a little joy and happiness to the lives of those who were making a great sacrifice.

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